// Editorial policy

Editorial policy

This page describes how content on Line Board is written, reviewed, sourced, dated, and corrected — and how we handle the fact that the site is published by a company that sells software in the category it writes about.

The short version

Line Board is published by RetailNorthstar, which sells a visual line board product. We disclose that everywhere rather than hiding it. In exchange we hold to a stricter sourcing standard than most vendor content: no statistic without a primary source we have read, no invented customers or case studies, comparisons that credit what the alternative does well, and a plain statement of when a spreadsheet is enough. Pages carry a visible author and publication date, and material corrections are dated on the page.

// Principle 1

We name the commercial relationship rather than hiding it

Line Board is published by RetailNorthstar, which sells Canvas — a connected visual line board. That is stated on the about page, in the site footer, and in the site’s structured data. We do not present this resource as an independent publication, and we do not publish under shell brands designed to look unaffiliated.

// Principle 2

No statistic ships without a source we have actually read

Every quantitative claim — a benchmark range, a percentage, an industry figure — has to trace to a primary source that a reader could open and check. If a number is widely repeated online but the trail dead-ends in another blog post citing another blog post, we do not publish it, however useful it would be. This rule has killed real claims we wanted to make. Where we give a range from practice rather than research, we say so in the sentence itself.

// Principle 3

No invented customers, quotes, or case studies

We do not write composite customers, illustrative testimonials, or “a brand we worked with” anecdotes. Examples on this site are either clearly hypothetical and labelled as such — the worked numbers in the option-count planner, for instance — or they do not appear. When we eventually publish customer outcomes, they will be attributable and consented, and you will be able to tell which is which.

// Principle 4

Comparisons name the competitor and describe them fairly

On any page comparing tools we state what the alternative is genuinely good at, not only where it falls short. Spreadsheets, whiteboards, and PLM boards each do real work, and our comparison pages say so. We describe competitor capabilities from their own public documentation, and we date the comparison, because products change and a stale comparison is a form of inaccuracy.

// Principle 5

We say when you do not need software

A spreadsheet or a physical wall is the right line board for plenty of teams, and small ranges rarely justify a tool. Where that is true we say it plainly rather than manufacturing a problem. A page that can only conclude “buy the product” is marketing wearing a guide’s clothes, and it is not what this site is for.

// Principle 6

Terminology follows practice, not our product

We use the vocabulary apparel teams actually use, including where it is inconsistent — line review and range review are the same meeting, and we say so instead of standardising on whichever term suits us. We do not rename an industry concept to match a product feature name.

// Authorship and dates

How pages are attributed

Substantive pages carry a visible byline and a publication date, and an updated date where the page has materially changed since publication. Those dates are the same values the page publishes in its structured data — they are read from one source, so the visible date and the machine-readable date cannot drift apart.

The Line Board Editorial Team byline is a group attribution covering the people inside RetailNorthstar who draft and review this material. We use it rather than inventing individual expert personas. See the about page for who that is.

// Corrections

How we handle errors

Typos and broken links are fixed without comment. A correction that changes the meaning of a page — a wrong definition, a mis-described competitor capability, a figure we should not have published — is fixed and the page’s updated date is moved, so the change is visible rather than silent.

To report an error, write to editorial@line-board.com. Corrections about how a competitor’s product works are welcome from that company directly.

// In summary

Line Board is published by RetailNorthstar, which sells a product in this category — disclosed on the page, in the footer, and in structured data.
No statistic is published without a primary source we have read end to end; claims that dead-end in secondary citations are dropped.
No invented customers, composite testimonials, or illustrative case studies. Hypothetical examples are labelled as hypothetical.
Comparisons credit what the alternative genuinely does well, cite the competitor’s own documentation, and carry a date.
Pages carry a visible byline and dates drawn from the same source as their structured data; material corrections move the updated date.

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